Billionaire Financier Adam Lindemann Tweaks the Neighbors With His Phallic Sculpture on the Bluffs of Montauk

The southern bluffs of Montauk rise high above the ocean, topped by just a few extraordinary homes—and, since last summer, a vertical pink sculpture, 15 feet high, with an unmistakable resemblance to an erect male penis. It’s called Eidolon, and it was crafted by the Viennese artist Franz West, who died earlier this year.

A good view of Montauk’s largest member can be had from Fred and Bettina Stelle’s front lawn, just east along the bluff top. Fred is a prominent Hamptons architect; he and his family occupy a large colonial house formerly owned by—and built by—the late photographer Richard Avedon.

Artist Franz West'sEidolon., By Doug Kuntz.

“What a guy like that is thinking is beyond me,” Stelle says of his neighbor, billionaire financier and art collector Adam Lindemann, who perched the pink sculpture at the edge of his own bluff-top property. “It’s a small neighborhood. Why would a guy with just a few neighbors behave like that?”

The sculpture does dominate the bluff, impinging to varying degrees on the views enjoyed by photographer Peter Beard and his wife, Nejma, singer/songwriter Paul Simon, modern-art dealer David Zwirner, and gemologist Jerry Ehrenwald. Worse, says Stelle, it’s illuminated at night: a beacon to ships near and far. Stelle likes his Montauk nights dark and star-filled. “We’re out here because it’s raw and primitive and wild. This is an injection of urban culture.”

There was speculation that Lindemann put the sculpture up to irk another neighbor, interior designer Tony Ingrao. For years, Ingrao has owned an open parcel of land adjacent to Lindemann’s property. Lindemann coveted it, so goes the story, but Ingrao declined to sell it to him. Instead, Ingrao has at last broken ground for a new house—one that will surely affect Lindemann’s ocean view. Hence the sculpture: art as phallic retaliation.

Even Ingrao dismisses that with a laugh, saying, “That’s all gossip.” He’s always intended to build on his parcel, he explains, so it was never for sale. “I’ve also heard he put the sculpture in front of my house because I’m gay,” says Ingrao, who with his partner, Randy Kemper, turns ordinary McMansions into antiques-filled châteaux. (Among the duo’s clients: former GE chairman Jack Welch and his wife, Suzy, and hedge funder Richard Perry and his wife, Lisa, a vintage-clothing retailer.) “I don’t view it as that. Adam just likes art.”

That he does. At 51, Lindemann is a serious collector who writes art reviews for The New York Observer. (He didn’t make his fortune writing for the salmon-colored weekly, however. His father, George, was a pioneer in contact lenses, cable, and cell phones, and made killings in all three; Adam made a smart bet of his own with Spanish radio stations.) Recently he opened a large gallery called Venus Over Manhattan, at 980 Madison Avenue, the old Sotheby’s building across from the Carlyle Hotel. He plans to sell edgy art to young financiers not quite ready for shiny Jeff Koons dogs from Larry Gagosian’s uptown gallery, one floor above.

Eidolon at night., By Doug Kuntz.

“I’ve been a Franz West supporter for about 10 years,” Lindemann says in his cavernous, sparely furnished office at the gallery. The Viennese artist behind Eidolon began as an “actionist,” making noodle-like objects he called “pashtuks,” and then performing with them. “I’ve always found them rather sexual,” Lindemann says. But not phallic. “You could say anything vertical is phallic.”Soon after moving into his Montauk house about five years ago, Lindemann startled his neighbors by putting a big yellow bear on his lawn. (In photographs, it’s plainly quite a bit larger than Eidolon, but it sits much farther back from the bluff.) It, too, was by a major artist, Urs Fischer. Stelle recalls Lindemann saying the bear was a temporary installation, but there it remains, a perky presence if not quite as visible as the high pink column, along with a changing array of other outdoor sculptures.

Lindemann says the Franz West will be removed soon, though a story in The East Hampton Star alluding to unnamed angry neighbors and possible code violations got his back up, he admits. “I thought it was bullying to accuse me of code violations,” says Lindemann. “You almost want to push back.”

By Montauk code, any structure on the bluffs must be set back 150 feet from their edge. East Hampton Town building inspector Tom Preiato confirms that the sculpture is in violation and was surprised this week to learn it’s still up. Lindemann himself seems torn. “It brings up numerous issues relating to right to privacy,” he says, “the right to do your own thing at your own home.”

Besides, Lindemann notes, the Stelles have a sculpture on theirfront lawn: a six- or seven-foot carved-stone column. It’s a lot more modest than Big Pink, and not illuminated, but Lindemann bets it’s not set back 150 feet, either. “And by the way, that isa phallus,” he says, “with a Maori head on it.” (Stelle says his family’s sculpture is unobtrusive, not lit, and pre-dates the setback rule.)

Opinion among the other bluff dwellers is divided. Ehrenwald, president of the International Gemological Institute, says he’s “100 percent supportive” of Lindemann’s outdoor art, but admits that because of the way his own house is angled, Big Pink doesn’t affect his ocean view. Photographer Beard and his wife, Nejma, don’t have the sculpture in their direct ocean view either, but they wish it were gone. “The main thing to remember,” they relay by e-mail, “is that one is in the country whence one goes to rest one’s weary eyes by contemplating the ‘lonely sea and the sky,’ not a giant earthworm.” Zwirner, whose Chelsea gallery exhibits mostly contemporary artists, says, “I would like to comment by saying ‘no comment.’” And Paul Simon declines to comment at all.

Lindemann says he’s still planning to take the piece down before winter. But, then . . . maybe not. “Its title is Eidolon,” he says with a mischievous grin, “which means ‘ghost’ or ‘phantom.’” Lately, on dark nights in his bluff-top house, he says, as fall winds whip the bluffs, he hears the phantom calling. “He’s saying, ‘Adam! Don’t take it down!’”